Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #331 - Storm Scale: Khans of Tarkir

Episode Date: May 13, 2016

Mark looks at the mechanics from the Khans of Tarkir block.

I'm flying my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today, in the last podcast, I talked all about what the storm scale was. Well, today, I take Kansi Tarkir and I explain all the mechanics in Kansi Tarkir, how they apply to the storm scale. So I wrote a column on this called Storm Scale Kansi Tarkir. So this is a more elaborate version of that, but basically I'm going to talk about sort of, hey, the Khans of Tarkir mechanics. Should we expect to see them again? Yes or no? Okay, so we're going to begin with Morph, one of the big mechanics of the block, actually a returning mechanic. Okay, so once again,

remember there's five different qualities that I'm going to talk about. So the qualities are popularity, versatility, popularity, design space, versatility, developmental issues, and playability. Okay, so let's start with popularity. So basically it was what we call liked. So there was very popular, popular, liked, and unpopular. So this means it's under 50%. It's on the bottom half, although on the top half of the bottom half. Morph is an interesting mechanic. I mean, people have, this is the third time we've used Morph. Morph was introduced in the Onslaught block, came back during the Time Spiral block,

and now returns for the second time in the Conduct Archer block. It's a polarizing mechanic. It is definitely a mechanic that the people that like it really like it, and those that don't like it really don't like it. It tends to... Sometimes the average doesn't always

represent its sort of feelings. I talk about this a lot in that one of the things we really are looking for is we like things that evoke strong emotion, even if that strong emotion isn't always positive. And this is one of those mechanics that tends to evoke strong emotion. People feel about the mechanic in some way or the other. But it has its fans and it definitely has a place sort of in Magic history okay, design space we could say it was large, small, or medium medium what that means is

there's a decent number of cards you can design with it, but it's not a giant number the fact that you have to always have a 2-2 for 3 mana really relegates a lot of what it can be. There's only so much you can put in any one set. And then we have some rules

about how easy it is to flip over, developmental rules. And so one of the rules is outside of rare, if you want to turn over and you become something that defeats a 2-2, meaning if you got in a fight with a 2-2, you'd kill the 2-2 and survive.

You have to cost at least five mana to be able to morph. And anyway, some of these restrictions to developmentally play correctly really limits how many cards. Once again, with design space, you've got to remember not just how many cards could you make overall, but how many cards can you make within the specific set.

Morph's one of those mechanics where, yeah, there's a lot of things you could do, but once you make one choice in the set, there's other choices that get off limits. And so there's only so much you can do within one set. But that said, it's medium, it's not small. You know, I'm sure we could do it again. Versatility.

I will say neutral. It does require a decent amount of build around with it. If you're making a lot of 2-2s for 3 mana, all of a sudden 2-3s are more valuable, or things that can do 2 damage, because everything has 2 toughness before you unmorph them. So anyway, but it's not... A lot of the things that you want to do, magic naturally kind of wants to do,

so I said it was neutral. Developmental. I put it was neutral. Developmental. I put it as problematic. Not very problematic, but problematic. Morph is difficult for development to work with. A three mana for a 2-2 is below the curve of what people would play

in Constructed, so you have to have a lot more on the other side to really make up for it, but you need to have it balanced, so it's tricky. Playability. More of a complicated mechanic. It uses the card back in a way most cards don't. It's a bit overwhelming for less experienced players,

so it definitely has a lot of baggage that comes with it. Okay, on the Storm Scale, I gave it a 4. Now, if you looked at what I said, that seems a little odd. Solely on the ratings I gave it, it. Now, if you looked at what I said, that seems a little odd. Solely on the ratings I gave it, it would probably be a little bit higher. But, the reason that it is where it's at is

there's some familiarity with it. One of the things that happens as things sort of become part of the magic vernacular, if you will, as people sort of get used to things, it is a little bit easier to bring it back. I mean, Morph has a certain role

and a place in the history of Magic, and so it is not as if I'm going to play Morph. It would be a mechanic that I'm starting from scratch. You know, it's not something... I think if I was presenting Morph for the first time,

it would be a harder sell than, oh, it's been back three times, you know, or happened once and was used twice. So three times total, two times coming back. That said, we've got to be careful with it. I mean, we have to be very conscious. It's definitely something when we have new players, it is an issue.

But I do think, if you ask me, do I think it'll come back? Yeah, it's got some issues to work with, and it's not the easiest thing to handle. But I do think we'll see it again. Raid, Cons of Tarkir okay so it was popular which means it's in the top half but the bottom half of the top half so the second 25% if you will, 50-75% but it was just barely there, it was light design space is medium, it can go on creatures

and it can go on spells it's kind of versatile in where you can put it. But it's reliant on attacking. And so it does limit the kind of effects you can do because the effects have to be combat neutral. What that means is let's say I have an effect that

like for example, I can't put raid on a giant growth because I would want to use the giant growth during combat and then it's complicated but understanding, you know, the timing is weird because I would want to use the giant growth during combat, and then it's complicated, but understanding, you know, the timing is weird if you're trying to use it in combat. And so, we tend to avoid those kind of effects, which just limits

the number of different things you can do with raid. But raid is still, like I said, the fact that you can put it on creatures or spells, still pretty big the amount of space you can do. Versatility, flexible. Very flexible. It requires attacking. Like, what infrastructure does it need?

It needs you to want to attack with creatures. Well, you know what does that? The game of Magic does that. So that's pretty easy. It's a pretty, it's pretty flexible in that regard. Developmental was not problematic. Development had no problems with it. So it wasn't a developmental issue.

And the playability, pretty straightforward, pretty simple. You know, the idea of did you attack or didn't you not attack, that's easy to understand. The rules are easy to understand. There's no real other issues tied to it. So, I gave it a Storm scale of 3, which

to me was pretty good mechanic, has design space, easy to understand. So, yeah, I do think we'll see this again. This is a mechanic that I'm very confident we'll see again. Okay, Outlast. Oh, by the way, I should explain these. Morph, for those that don't know what it is. Morph is you can pay three mana to play the card face down as a 2-2, and then you can pay its morph costs at any time to turn it face up and turn it to whatever creature it is. Raid is a mechanic or ability word that says,

if a creature is attacked this turn, then some bonus to your spell. Your spell is better if you've already attacked with a creature this turn. Okay, Outlast. Outlast is a mechanic that you can, I think you have to use it on your turn. Or no, do you? No, no, no. Yeah, you have to use it as a sorcery. It allows you to put a plus one, plus one counter on your creature, but you may only use it if, it requires a tap. I guess even vigilance you can attack.

But pretty much you can't attack and make use of this ability. The flavor of it is, instead of attacking, I can go meditate and practice or whatever and strengthen myself. But I have to remove myself from fighting to do that. So popularity, it was unpopular. It showed up in the bottom 25%. So it wasn't a particularly beloved mechanic. Design space is small.

In fact, the reason when we were looking at which mechanics were going to go with Fate Reforged, Outlast didn't have enough mechanics we felt we could easily make the second set with them. So there's not a lot of design space. You know, it only goes on creatures. The creatures have to have enough difference from one another that it makes sense that you're making it bigger. So there's just not tons that you can do with it. We also had to make some things that care about plus one, plus one counters to make them more you want to play them together.

There's only so much of that we can do. So it's definitely a mechanic that fights against the space that it goes in. Versatility is pretty neutral. I mean, creatures getting bigger makes sense in a vacuum. You don't need infrastructure to make that so. Developmental is neutral. It wasn't problematic in the sense that it doesn't cause them problems, but it's not easy to use.

That's why it's neutral. That it is a hard mechanic to make relevant and constructed. Playability. It uses counters. It has creatures that grant abilities with those counters so there's a bunch going on it definitely is a little bit more complicated your opponent has to pay a little extra attention

to realize that your things are growing so it has some playability issues it's not that hard to understand but it has some board complexity issues, and it has just being able to track what's going on and track what matters, especially since plus and plus counters can grant abilities, can be complicated, especially on the board to watch. So my Storm Scale is a 7.

I don't think Outlast is coming back. It's flavorful, but it's a really small design space. It's hard to develop. It's got a bunch of issues around it. And it just wasn't that popular. So, like, if Mechanic is really popular but problematic, okay, well, then I can maybe see it coming back. Because, you know, players are willing to jump through hoops if there's a payoff.

But they don't want to jump through hoops if it's not something they're particularly fond of. So the fact that this mechanic rated so low and has all the problems I talked about makes it tricky. I mean, it's a 7. It doesn't mean it couldn't come back. But it would need to be a really good fit for it to come back. Okay, next is Prowess. So Prowess was popular. It was in the top 25%. People really liked it. In fact, it's the mechanic that kept going up

as we did the God Book study. So we do two God Book studies per set, and it was in both Constant Arkyr and Fate Reforged. And literally, the first time we asked in Constant Arkyr, it was the lowest-rated of the guild mechanics. And then the second time, it was the highest-rated, and then it was even higher-rated, here, it was the lowest-rated of the guild mechanics, and then the second time, it was the highest-rated, and then it was even higher-rated, and then it was even higher-rated. So, it ended up being very, very popular during the duration.

It's one of those mechanics, when people first saw it, they were underwhelmed by it, they thought it was weak. I think that's why it got low ratings at first, but then people played with it, and were like, oh, wow, this is not remotely weak, this is actually a pretty strong mechanic. Design space, large. You can put prowess, oh wow, this is not remotely weak. This is actually a pretty strong mechanic. Design space, large. You can put prowess, I mean it's a creature mechanic, so it only goes to creatures, but

there's a lot of combinations of creatures you can go on. In fact, this can go in almost any creature and it's interesting. It's pretty open-ended. Versatility, flexible. It requires you to have non- creature spells. Well, something Magic does is have non-creature spells. Creature spells make up about

50 to 55% of the cards, so the rest, I guess that aren't lands, are not creature spells, so there's plenty to play off of. It's definitely something that's usable. Flexible. Very easy to use. Oh, I'm sorry. I just talked about flexibility. Very easy to use. Plays in what the game already does.

Developmental. Not problematic at all. Actually, I'm sorry. I just said flexibility. Very easy to use. Plays in what the game already does. Developmental, not problematic at all. Actually, development is quite fine in the mechanic. It actually creates an interesting tension in gameplay in places that don't cause any developmental problems. Playability, pretty straightforward. Doesn't use counters. Doesn't have any rules

complication. It's not particularly complex. It's proved to be very easy for people to understand. So, it pretty much does everything we like. It's popular, has a large design space, it's flexible in its versatility, not problematic in development, and it has no

playability issues. Basically, it's the best you could score, and that's the reason we made it an evergreen mechanic. It's a Storm Scale of 1. You will see it soon because it's become an evergreen mechanic. We like it so much. It was such a... It was a home run as far as keywords go.

Okay, next, Delve. So Delve shows up in Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged. The previous morph showed up, well, only technically in Khans of Tarkir, although a morph variant showed up in both the other sets. Manifest is a little bit different. We'll talk about that. And Megamorph we'll talk about, too. But morph itself, sort of plain morph, just showed up in Kanzatarkir.

Raid and Outlast. Well, Raid showed up in just Kanzatarkir, and Outlast showed up in just Concertarquier. Raid wasn't because of a space issue. Raid was because we really liked the black-red mechanic that was in Dragon's Tarquier, Dash, and we thought it would be very good

and for different reasons other things needed to be there. We did not do Outlast because we didn't have a design space. Okay, now we get to mechanics that were in both, the first two sets. So Delve was in Constant Arc here and Fate Reforged. Hold on one second. I need to cut over traffic and safety first.

Okay, so popularity, it was light. It was in the bottom half percentage but the top half, so the 50 to 75% range. I'm sorry, the 25 to 50 percent range. The top half of the bottom

half, so the second quarter out of four, I guess. The problem I think Delve had was, Delve, and we'll get to this in a second, but Delve is powerful, but powerful both can make people happy and upset people. Design space is medium. It goes on any spell.

So there's a lot of different kinds of spell you can do with it. The problem you run into, the reason that it's not the design space is not large is you need to have a spell big enough that it's worth reducing the cost. So there's a lot of spells that Delve doesn't make sense on

just because it's too cheap. If you cost three or less mana, saving mana is not that big a deal. So Delve tends to go on things that are more expensive. Versatility. I will say neutral. The game does put cards in the graveyard, so it's not like naturally you can't do that. But to really take advantage of delve you need to have enablers um i mean it's not that you can't throw delve in a normal deck eventually things

will get in your graveyard but really to take advantage of delve you need some enablers so there's some um and delve has the problem of that it doesn't want too much. I don't really have a great name for this. On my blog, we talked about this. Mechanics that kind of fight for the same space, that you can only have so much of them because they fight for the same space. I think cannibalistic was the word

we were talking about on my blog. So I use cannibalistic. They kind of eat the same space, and so you can't have too... Delve requires you to use a certain resource. Well, I can't fill my deck with Delve cards unless I have a deck that's all about getting that resource to happen. I can have a few Delve cards, but not a lot.

Development's problematic. This is one of those... This mechanic did something we don't see a lot, which is it wasn't a problem in standard. It was a problem in older formats. Treasure Cruise, for example, it's the kind of card I think we restricted in vintage, and I believe we banned in modern, I believe. It's just a problematic card. In formats like that, where it's a lot easier to get cards in your graveyard just because of the flow of the game. It just becomes a more powerful spell.

But anyway, even in Standard, it wasn't played in Standard. It just wasn't broken in Standard. But it is problematic. It's developmental. One of the reasons getting back is going to be a hard problem is it really is one of these mechanics that it's hard to cost

because it makes itself cheaper. So even if you put a real expensive cost on it, if you get too high, then it doesn't look good. So anyway, it is problematic. Playability, no, pretty straightforward. It doesn't use counters. It doesn't have rules issues.

It doesn't... It's not horribly complex in how it functions. So it doesn't really have any additional rules to it. Storm Scale 8. The reason I gave it an 8 is that, well, it is a problematic mechanic. It's not even super light, interestingly. It came in the bottom half, but it just developmentally has issues. There's some design issues to it. Really, the developmental issues are the biggest thing. I think that design can work its way around some of the problems if it wasn't causing so many developmental problems.

So I think that's the reason it's an 8. It's like, okay, if we brought it back, we'd have to solve a bunch of problems. And not just design problems. We'd have to solve developmental problems. Okay, ferocious. Khan's Tarkir and fate were forged. Okay, ferocious. Con to Tarkir and fate reforged. Okay, so this is an ability word that says if you control a creature

with power four or more, you get an extra... Your ability is either stronger or you get a second ability. Popularity. It was unpopular in the bottom quarter. Zero to 25%. Design space. Medium. You need to have spells that you can enhance and be

additive to. We do that a lot in Magic, so it's not like we don't have access to that, but it limits it somewhat. It's medium. There's a lot of effects that we can do that with, but not a giant amount, so that's why it is a medium design space.

Flexibility, pretty flexible. It cares about having big creatures. Magic has big creatures. It doesn't really require you to do anything different. You probably do a little bit of the four ones and things where you stretch to make four power creatures be a little cheaper, but that's not particularly hard to do. Developmentally, not problematic. It didn't really cause, I mean, it wasn't, it was the kind of mechanic that you have to get people to play big creatures to play it, and that's hard sometimes to construct it, but it didn't cause many problems. Playability, not particularly affected.

It's pretty straightforward, doesn't have rules issues, doesn't have complexity issues. A little bit of complexity issues, but not enough to move the needle much. Storm Scale 7. move the needle much. Storm Scale 7. So this is a perfect example of a mechanic that I never need to see that mechanic return. It's kind of a ho-hum mechanic.

Players, you know, we played fine, but players weren't entranced with it. But it's kind of a workhorse mechanic where I can imagine the day where it's just exactly what we need, and I'm not going to not do it if it perfectly fits the design I just feel like there's no reason to bring this back unless something actually really sort of pulls it forward and says you need to play it

okay next is manifest so this was only in fate reforged uh so manifest says uh when you use manifest you get a card um from the top of your library, usually, although it would get it from other places occasionally, and put it face down as a 2-2 creature, and then if that is a creature, you may spend its mana cost to turn it face up. So it's sort of a proto-morph, is what it was designed to be. Popularity was liked, meaning it was in the top half of the bottom, so the 25-50%. The interesting thing about this mechanic was, the people that liked it really, really liked it.

So the popularity is a little unfair in that it actually did a little bit better in the people who rate it highly, who like it rated highly. Design space, medium. the people who rate it rate it highly who like it rate it highly design space medium you have to be careful how many of these do and where they go and they kind of fill the role of tokens so when you do these you have to have less tokens in the set there's some space it's not infinite and I can make more cards with it

but it's not something that I could imagine forever making clean versions without having to reprint some stuff. Versatile is neutral. It definitely affects some stuff around it. Like I said, it affects... kind of tokens have to go down to make this work.

It's not horribly oppressive in what it needs to do for the set around it, but it has some effect. So it's neutral in that it's not... The best ones are ones you have to do anything. This one you have to do for the set around it, but it has some impact. So it's neutral in that it's not... The best ones are ones you have to do anything. This one, you have to do a few things, but not so much that it's that big a deal,

so I put it in neutral. Developmental, neutral. There are some developmental issues, but stuff they were able to deal with. It's not developmental free. It's not free, but it's not problematic. It's kind of in the middle. Playability.

Playability is very much affected. It is complicated. It's a complicated mechanic. It's very complex. In fact, it's more complex than Morph, and Morph is complex. And there's a lot of logistical issues

of how it works and what happens when you get cards and how does it work with double-faced cards and anyway, it definitely has a lot of issues with that. So Storm Scale, I gave it a 6. It has a lot to overcome to come back, but the people that like it really, really like

it. It definitely would be an exciting thing when it returned for some of the players. It really would be, like, it's the kind of mechanic that has fans where, like some mechanics, like if I bought back Ferocious, there's very few people that go, oh my goodness, Ferocious is back. I'm buying this set. Awesome, Ferocious. There's a lot of people that would have decided that Manifest came back. That's the difference between the two, is that

Manifest was polarizing, but the people that liked it really liked it, where Ferocious was like, eh, nobody liked it that much. Okay, Bolster. Bolster was both in Fate Reforged and Dragon's Arc here. Its popularity was popular in the second, so lower half of the upper part,

so 50 to 75%. But just barely. People liked it. Design space is medium. It can go on creatures and spells, but it puts counters on things, so there's a limit of how much you can do, and there's a limit of how many cards it makes sense with.

Versity of Tilda is pretty flexible. It just requires having creatures in play. Magic likes to do that, so it doesn't really impact you making the set as far as what you have to build around it. Developmentally, not problematic. It played just fine, and the playability is not affected. It's pretty straightforward. I mean, I guess it does use counters,

but in a pretty straightforward, easy way, not hard to track, and not too complicated. So Storm Scale, I gave it a 5. I feel like it's a fun mechanic. People generally liked it. It doesn't cause a lot of issues, no developmental issues, not a lot of major design issues.

So it's not as clean or as popular as some mechanics, that's why it's a little higher than, you know, it's not a 3 or a 4, it's not as clean or as popular as some mechanics, that's why it's a little higher than, you know, it's not a 3 or a 4, it's a 5. But anything below a 5, I feel like, if I was a betting man, I think it would come back. That doesn't mean things above 5 can't come back. On average, I expect things below 5 to eventually come back. Okay, dash. Also in Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir. This was a mechanic, went on creatures. You could pay the dash cost and if you did,

the creature had flash, I'm not flash, sorry, the creature had haste and then end your turn and return to your hand. Sometimes it lets you get bigger creatures a lot faster

but you had to recast them. Sometimes it lets you do cool things with enter the battlefield effects and stuff. Its popularity was popular. So in the 50 to 75% range. Design space is medium.

It only goes on creatures, but there's a bunch of different kinds of creatures you can put it on, although it doesn't go on every creature. Versatility, flexible. It's a combat mechanic. It requires you to have it in combat. Magic does that pretty well. Developmental, not problematic. It didn't cause any problems with development.

Playability, no, not too complex. Doesn't use counters. Doesn't have rules issues. It's a pretty straightforward mechanic. Storm Scale, I gave this a three. I believe this was, it both is a popular mechanic and has this, it shines from a design standpoint. It really is, you can make a lot of cool cards out of it. It's easy to design cards with it. They end up being very cool cards. Like I said, developmentally it's not an issue. Players really liked it.

So I believe this mechanic has a really good chance of coming back. In fact, I'm very confident we will see it again. Okay, now we get to mechanics that are only in Dragon's Ark here. So we start with Megamorph. So Megamorph was unpopular. So it is actually the lowest scoring mechanic of all time since we've been doing market research on mechanics.

That said, I believe that rating is a little bit unfair. Morph does much better than Megamorph. I think the problem of this mechanic was we set expectations poorly. People were expecting something as different from Morph as Manifest was from Morph. And so I think this suffered from really bad expectation setting on our part. Meaning, the mechanic

actually plays well. We'll get to the other parts about it. It was not a popular mechanic. Also, the name was much behated to use a word I've invented. Okay, design space. Medium. It has the same restrictions that Morph do. Most Morph cards could become

Megamorph. The only reason that you might not put it on some of them is just a complexity issue of just adding extra text, but design-wise, Megamorph can go on most creatures that you could put Morph on. Versatility, neutral. It has all the issues that Morph has, but really no issues beyond that. I guess it matters about, or produces counters, so there's that. But not that big a deal. Magic does that all the time.

Developmental, problematic. Problematic because Morph is problematic. In fact, I think it's slightly less problematic than morph in that there's a few tools. This mechanic gives you a reason why you'd want to morph something and unmorph it. I'm not sure if unmorph actually is a technical term, but that's what I use it. So, it actually, Megamorph showed up a little more constructed than morph did. So actually, it's a little easier in development than morph, but it's close. Playability definitely affected. It has

all the morph issues, which are complexity issues, and it has plus and plus encounters, so it definitely is a pretty complex mechanic. Stormscale rating, I gave it a 9. In general, I gave it a 9. It actually plays decently. The reason I gave it a 9 was we so badly

burned the name Megamorph that I believe that if we ever wanted to do this again, we would just make morph cards and spell it out and not bother to have its own mechanic. We made a misstep and so much so we burned the name of the

mechanic. And I feel like if I ever wanted to do this again, I would just do it and write it out and not call attention to it. The sadness for me is that I actually think this is a neat mechanic and it plays well. And like I said, it's actually a little bit easier for development to get into constructed.

Probably what that means is next time you see Morph, we'll make more use of some technology. It'll just be part of Morph and it won't be its own thing. But I'd be surprised if you see the words Megamorph come back. Okay, Rebound was in Dragons of Tarkir. It's a repeat mechanic. First showed up in Scourge, I think? Anyway, you cast the spell, it goes to Instants and Sorceries,

and then not only does it go off this turn, it goes off the beginning of next turn. So popularity, very popular. People liked Rebound. It was in the top 75 to 100%. People liked it last time we did it, they liked it when we brought it back. It was, I think,

the highest rated mechanic in... Oh, the highest rated in Concentrate Cure Block. That's what I'm being told. Of all the mechanics in the set, prowess was the highest rated in concertar gear. I think rebound got slightly higher rated

than prowess. Okay, design space. Well, it only goes in instance and sorcery, so there's some restrictions there. So I said medium for design space. Flexibility, pretty flexible.

Most instance and sorceries you can cast a second time. The best ones are ones where there's a strategic reason to want to have knowledge that it's coming. Some ones are better than others, but it's still pretty flexible. It doesn't require any infrastructure. There's nothing you have to do to the game to make a rebound

work. Developmental, not problematic. They had no problem with rebound. Playability, there's a memory issue. This is the playability thing. You have to remember that you did it, and you have to do something to give you memory aid. Rebound occasionally has people forgetting. That causes tournament issues.

Storm scale is a three. It was liked. We brought it back once. We did it. People liked it. We brought it back.. We did it. People liked it. We brought it back. People really liked it. Okay, so it's a chance of coming back.

Pretty good. It's a nice, clean, simple mechanic. Like I said, it's got a few memory issues, but that really is the harshest thing I can say about it. Okay, next we have Exploit. So Exploit was only in Dragon's Dark here. When an Exploit creature came into play, you could sacrifice a creature and if you did, it did something. Popularity was light, but barely. So it was in the 25-50%,

but barely, like I was saying. Design space is medium and only one on creatures, but pretty flexible. Anything that can be an entrance battlefield effect mostly could work. Versatility was neutral. It required a little bit of infrastructure. You needed things that you might want to sacrifice.

Smaller things, tokens, creatures with death triggers. We definitely had to put some of that in to make it work. Developmental was neutral. It was a hard mechanic to make constructed worthy. I mean, they did it, but it had some issues. One second. it has some issues one second um

um playability was not affected it doesn't it's pretty straightforward um it was the reason I think that it wasn't particularly liked

you know it was in the lower end was not everybody likes to um not everybody likes to sacrifice their creature. So it was a spiky mechanic. I mean, it was made

to be a spiky mechanic. But it definitely has a little bit of a strike of popularity that people don't like to sacrifice their own stuff. It actually played pretty well. I thought it was a cool mechanic.

I gave it a storm scale of 6. I thought it played really well and it has a was a cool mechanic. I gave it a Storm Scale of 6. I thought it played really well and it has a lot of versatility but not particularly popular and it requires the right environment to make work. So it's kind of a mechanic that like maybe we could see it again.

It design wise does some cool things and it definitely fits in a niche space that a lot of things don't fit. So I could see doing a set where I need this kind of mechanic and there's not a lot of mechanics like this kind of mechanic. So that's why I gave it a six. So it's like, probably I don't think we'll see it, but it would surprise me not very much if we do. That's why I gave it a six. So next, Formidable. Also only in Dragon's Dark here. So this was a, uh,

ability so you could only use, um, or, well, it's, sometimes I guess they were static, sometimes they were activated abilities, I think.

Um, you could only use if you had eight or more power of creatures. Um, so, uh, its popularity was unpopular, bottom,

bottom, zero to 25%. Uh, Ferocious was unpopular. This was kind of the tweak on Ferocious, so it was also unpopular. Bottom 0-25%. Ferocious was unpopular. This was kind of the tweak on Ferocious, so it was also unpopular. Design Space was small. You have to

both do upgradable things, but do upgradable things that care about creatures. Versatility was neutral. You definitely had to make sure you had enough. But we have creatures, so it required a little bit of infrastructure, but not tons. Development was neutral. They didn't particularly have any issues with it, so it required a little bit of infrastructure, but not tons. Development was neutral. They didn't particularly have any issues with it, but it also wasn't easy for them to use.

Playability, eh, not really affected. It wasn't hard to understand. But I gave it a storm scale of a 9. And most of the reason was people didn't like it. It wasn't particularly easy to use. It wasn't easy to design around. It didn't help development. It was one of those mechanics that didn't like it. It wasn't particularly easy to use. It wasn't easy to design around. It didn't help development. It was one of those mechanics that didn't hurt development. It didn't, wasn't super taxing on design, but it was kind of like, well, here's a mechanic that

requires some, you know, has some baggage with it. And then people really, really didn't like it. So I don't mind doing baggage when there's things that people like. I mean, both design and development are willing to step up to the plate and figure things out when there's a payoff. And that payoff is people really like it. Well, people didn't really like this mechanic, so this is not something that I expect to see again. So anyway, those are all the mechanics from Concept Arc here.

So hopefully, I hope you guys like this. One of the things that people seem very interested in, why the Storm Scale is very popular is, I think people like to see, okay, you did a mechanic, how to do, what do people think? Do design like it? Do development like it?

You know, what are the issues with it? And this hopefully lets you see that, like, there are a lot of issues with the mechanic. Like, when we look at a mechanic, there's so many different things we're looking at. And like I said, you know, is it fun? Do people like it? How hard is it to make? How hard is it to balance?

You know, all these issues go into is this something we would do again? And so, anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it. I plan to do future Storm Scale issues. I think the plan is I'll probably do the columns first because the columns, this requires a bunch of homework, but the columns make me do the homework. So anyway, I think you will see more Storm Scale podcasts

and more Storm Scale columns. But anyway, I'm about to pull up to my daughter's school. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Thanks, guys. I will see you next time.